What can we say come October 15? 19th after Pentecost

     It would be hard to name a passage more revealing of human nature, and more mind-boggling in terms of what God is like than Exodus 32 (which the lectionary weirdly crops way short at verse 14; we will continue to v. 24…).  The people: impatient, still stuck in Egypt in their souls, amnesiacs, irresponsible… and then God: raging, then changing the divine mind, talked off the ledge by Moses.  I can’t do much better than this short excerpt from my new book, Weak Enough to Lead – which introduces the idea that Moses led God:

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     Moses had to have lived in a constant state of exasperation, for Martin Buber was right: “Whenever he comes to deal with this people, he is defeated by them.” Exodus 32 provides the most dramatic example of his failed leadership, but in that moment Moses discovered a renewed calling.

     Moses was far away on top of the mountain for longer than the people had anticipated. So they concluded that Moses was delaying (why?), and began to refer to him as “this man Moses,” not “our beloved Moses.” So they fashioned an idol, a golden bull, the kind they’d seen back in Egypt, connoting strength, potency, virility. At that very moment, God was telling Moses what their gold was supposed to be used for: to adorn the tabernacle.

     The Lord saw their lunacy first and told Moses, speaking of them not as “my people” but “your people” whom “you” (Moses, not I, the Lord!) brought out of Egypt. Moses turned the tables just as swiftly, referring to them not as “my people” but as “your people whom you” (the Lord!) brought out of Egypt. Down in the valley, Aaron his brother had proven to be an effective but wrongly directed leader. Once the calf was finished, they threw a big party. When Moses happened upon the scene, Aaron violated Jim Collins’s rule for Level 5 leaders (leaders attribute success to others and apportion blame to themselves) and explained how “they” were set on evil. He bore no responsibility. Hilariously he recalled what transpired: “I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off!’ So they gave it to me, I threw it into the fire, and out came this bull calf!” (Exod 32:24).

     What Moses achieved in this moment astonishes us. God was determined to pour wrath down on the people and be done with them. But Moses argued with God, marshalling his case that God should relent: “Calm down your fierce anger. Change your mind” (v. 12). And Exodus 32:14 reports that “the Lord changed his mind.” Moses led God! Oddly enough, as Michael Walzer observes, Moses was “rather more successful with God than with the people.” Moses, struggling to lead the people for decades, had pretty fair results in leading God, pleading successfully on behalf of his people.

    {here endeth the excerpt!}

      The preacher need not provide moralistic take-aways, although they are the low-hanging fruit.  Let the story stand.  Let people see themselves and others in it.  Let them most important get a glimpse of the severe holiness of God struggling with the tender mercy of God.

     The violence at the end staggers.  I recall what I learned from Jonathan Sacks on a similar passage: 1 Kings 18.  Elijah slaughters the Canaanite priests – but Sacks points out that the rabbis were appalled, noting that God never told him to kill them.  I think it’s healthy and hopeful for clergy to wonder out loud if Moses, or the writer of Exodus mis-heard God – just as we all do.  Scripture is still very much inspired – precisely in sharing moments when people act in ways contrary to the larger heart of God known throughout Scripture.

     Our Epistle reading, Phil 4:1-9, is my parade example for beginning Bible students on the virtue of reading slowly and interrogating the text as it interrogates us.  In quick succession, Paul says Rejoice always.  Do not be anxious.  With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  These three are tightly knit together.  Let’s ponder how – now as we prepare to preach, and in the sermon itself.

     Phil. 4:6, the least obeyed command in the Bible:  “Have no anxiety.”  We are anxiety-riddled – and the very demand not to be anxious feels like piling on.  I was anxious.  Now I’m anxious about my inability to be non-anxious and I’m failing God.  How should we have no anxiety?

     “Let your requests be made known to God.”  OK, Lord, cure my anxiety – or fix the situation giving rise to my anxiety.  But read Paul more slowly:  “With thanksgiving let your requests be made known…” Paul must be mixed up: it’s supposed to be we file our requests, and if God complies, then we give thanks – right? No, “with thanksgiving let your requests be made known.” We begin with gratitude.  Jesus invited the crowd to be rid of anxiety by pointing to the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field: they are arrayed in beauty, God provides for them (read Matthew 6:25-34!).  Notice what God has done, feel the blessings you neglected to pay attention to (which is probably why you got into the anxious mess you’re in…). Could it be that gratitude is the antidote to anxiety?

     The psychiatrist Martin Seligman has written (in his great book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being) about anxiety – and shares that studies show how gratitude alleviates anxiety and depression (not entirely, but by a significant, measurable percentage).  My personal observation is that it is impossible to be anxious and grateful at the same time.  Something about gratitude – and not merely feeling thankful but actually expressing it in a note, a phone call, whatever – calms and even reverses anxiety, at least in the moment.

     That’s when the joy comes in: “Rejoice always.”  How?  By not being anxious.  How?  By sharing your requests with God – with thanksgiving.  And then, when this becomes habitual, and natural, we get to the goal of the thing: Peace.  “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7).

     The Roman emperor boasted that he was the guarantor of peace, the pax romana.  But how did he keep the peace? By wielding a bigger sword than anybody else. If you marshal enough well-drilled troops with clashing armor, you get peace – right? Or was Dorothee Soelle right? “Armed people have no peace.”

     God’s peace is never won when the vanquished cower before threatening spears, or when everybody in the house walks on eggshells, fearing the one who demands on peace at home. God’s peace is a gift, it lifts up and ennobles the weakest, it delivers justice and hope; God’s peace is all love, compassion and that curious strength that embraces rather than strikes.  It thrives in the soil of gratitude; joy is its flower.

     How intriguing that Paul dictates out loud, with the emperor’s Praetorian guard listening through the bars, that God’s peace will “keep” your hearts: the Greek word means to “guard.” Paul is in prison, guarded by men with weapons; but who’s really free, and who isn’t? In God’s hidden script, it’s the armed soldiers, and the emperor himself, who are not free but are in chains, while Paul is free as a bird, protected from them by the peace of God.

     Then the other piece here, the culminating strategy to discover joy and peace, is this text I often read at funerals: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  Robert Hughes wrote insightfully about the Culture of Complaint in which we live. Political campaigns, relationships, reactions to schools, government, and the guy cutting you off in traffic – all causes of rancor, and we harbor suspicion about everything and everybody.

     But Paul suggests that having the mind of Christ requires another mental posture; if we are to have any chance for joy, it will never come if we seek out reasons to carp and grouse. The Christian is one who focuses on what is true and honorable, who delights in justice and purity, who notices the lovely and gracious, appreciates and strives for excellence. We praise; we encourage; we choose to think on the good. 

Jewel’s best lyric goes like this:

It doesn’t take talent to be mean
Please be careful with me
I’m sensitive, and I’d like to stay that way.
I have this theory that if we’re told we’re bad
Then that’s the only idea we’ll ever have
But maybe if we are surrounded in beauty
Some day we will become what we see.

The beauty that is everywhere was crystallized and definitively embodied in Jesus, who is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise.

     I’m skipping the Gospel.  Matthew 22:1-14 just strikes me as yet one more of Jesus’ angrier, mystifying parables.  Too much value in Exodus and Philippians to go there.

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   ** My two newest books, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, and Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us About Powerful Leadership, are available.

What can we say come October 8? 18th after Pentecost

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  {Just below you'll find the preaching blog for Oct. 8 I posted a couple of months ago. Let me add now that I am pretty certain I will say something about the Las Vegas mass shooting.  Unsure what - obviously an expression of horror and grief... and beyond that, something - but the story and feelings deepen and hopefully become wiser as the week goes by.  As of Monday morning, as Exodus 20 is one of my 2 texts, I may suggest that "Thou shalt not kill" wasn't an individualistic commandment, but God's way of creating a kind of community, a nation where killing wasn't a thing; so what do we, as the church, which is part of the nation, need to labor toward so killing (so rampant in America) is reduced?  I blogged last year ("It's Time for the End of our Prayers") on the futility of, after a shooting, good people saying "our thoughts and prayers are with"... whomever; my blog said it's time to stop the prayers and do something.  The commandment, "no other gods," may also figure in this.  Political ideology is modernity's idolatry - and the ideology of absolute gun rights has to be the parade example of this.  Perilous territory, but somehow, gently, but strongly, this has to be named and exposed.  Then the Philippians text speaks of losing anything, even everything, for the sake of knowing Jesus - so what do we need to lose, to set aside, to be close to the Jesus who is grieved by Las Vegas but also is pleading with us to be a very different kind of people?}
Now, back to the previously posted blog:

I love Ordinary Time, and what feels to me like an expanded opportunity to explore the Old Testament, Psalm or Epistle (which I'll cover below), which we may usually veer from during the Jesus-focused seasons.  The need to preach wisely on Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 (but I wouldn’t skip 5, 6, 10 or 11!) is self-evident.  What more contested, politicized, misunderstood and trivialized text could there be?  Most Christians mis-spin Paul and take a negative view of the law; but then other Christians lean strongly into the commandments, wishing for them to be posted in public, but always in judgment of others, rarely in critical self-reflection.

  {I preached on this text 3 years ago; you can watch it here}


I have two pressing items you may not have which I'll use as a framework.  (1) One is programmatic: we're doing a marriage renewal workshop - which I'll pitch via my second, more personal item: (2) My daughter just got married.  People know your personal events; how to dovetail them meaningfully into preaching?  Everybody saw the Facebook photos, and assume it was the usual wedding industry/over-the-top kind of event, which it wasn't... but the highlight of the wedding (for me and for FB peeps) was at the reception: instead of a "first dance," my daughter suggested she and I do a "first song," which turned out to be a reprise of a song she sang in a talent show at age 4. 

I'll share all this to raise emotion - which I believe opens people's hearts then to hear something about the Gospel... plus the song's words have helped me rethink the Ten Commandments!  "Somewhere over the rainbow... there's a land that I dreamed of... Dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."  I will ask what we think of when we "dream" - and then suggest, What would it be like to dream a life of holiness, or to dream a life of intimacy with God?  Maybe we can reframe the 10 commandments as a dream of such a life.  I hope they'll buy it.

This is theologically sound - which we may recall if we ponder this week's Psalm (19), which does not chafe under the law, but in a multisensory way relishes and delights in the law.  Sweeter than honey!  Reviving the soul, rejoicing the heart, more desirable than gold.  I think of the fabulous moment in Zora Neale Hurston's Moses:

“Moses lifted the freshly chiseled tablets of stone in his hands and gazed down the mountain to where Israel waited. He knew a great exultation. Now men could be free. They had something of the essence of divinity expressed. They had the chart and compass of behavior. They need not stumble into blind ways and injure themselves. This was bigger than Israel. It comprehended the world.  Israel could be a heaven for all men forever, by these sacred stones. With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned to where Joshua waited for him. “Joshua, I have laws. Israel is going to know peace and justice.”

This path to freedom was well-understood by Martin Luther, who noticed the immense grace of God in each commandment.  Certainly they stand before us as a mirror, revealing our sin – which then is the beginning of grace.  And the mercy hidden in each command!  What better sermon could you preach that to narrate the way God in mercy relieves us of our burdens by declaring “You don’t have to have other gods, you can rest, you don’t have to covet.” 

Preaching Exodus 20 begins (and ends) in directing people’s attention to the context (I'll say "Context, context, context" is like "location, location, location" in real estate - which in the booming Charlotte market will resonate).  These commandments didn’t float down chiseled in stone into courthouses or houses, universally applicable laws God has decreed absolutely.  The commandments are the first of hundreds – and all of them are part of a longer story of people crying out under oppression, God hearing (and caring!), sending Moses, the miracles/signs (a la Jesus in John’s Gospel), the deliverance at the sea, and even the extraordinary patience of God in the wilderness, showering the people with manna when they deserved lightning bolts.  God’s commands come after, in the thick of, and as a prelude to the merciful gift of salvation; obedience to the commandments isn’t a credential to qualify as a good person, or a way to curry God’s favor, but the reflexive, grateful life in startled reply to God’s abundant gift of love.

The Gospel isn’t the end of the law (as in, it’s over and irrelevant) – or we might finesse the word and say the Gospel actually is the end (as in the goal/purpose) of the law (Romans 10:4’s tantalizing ambiguity!).  God did tender these laws with a fair expectation we could follow them or at least get in the ballpark.  There is such a thing as holiness, as a deep desire to fulfill God’s will/wishes.  Brevard Childs: “The intent of the commandments is to engender love of God and love of neighbor.”

The preacher could pick one command and zero in – or you could do what I plan to do, just a quick, breezy touching on each one with an explanatory note or two.  No other gods?  Luther clarified that our god is whatever motivates us, changes your mood, embodies the good life… so who is your God?  No images of God?  We are made in God’s image, and Jesus is the flawless image of God – so other creature-like images (the Egyptian or the Wall Street golden bull, you name it…) mislead.  Do not take the Lord’s name in vain?  The worst offenders are our politicians who paste God’s name on much that is not of God, all posturing; and we church folk do the same, attaching God to much that is grievously not of God.  Remember the Sabbath?  Can we switch off our gadgets and actually rest?  And did you notice the lectionary lops off the longer explanation of the Sabbath?  There must be good reason it gets “more air time than any others” (Brueggemann) – as if we’d miss the comprehensive nature of it or wriggle our way out.

 Don’t kill – and Jesus went deep, explaining that anger is an interior kind of murder (and in our rancorous culture, where anger management is a big thing, aren’t we rabid killers?).  I'm going to linger on this one.  We had a Jewish neighbor two weeks ago who came home from Rosh Hashanah services to find a swastika and hate language scrawled on their home; and then Charlotte (where I live) is now targeted for the next Charlottesville-like white supremacist rally.  Americans fancy defense of freedom of expression; but we don't let people walk down the street undressed.  In Germany, if you raise a swastika you go to jail.  Were we to revise/update the ten commandments for today, an easy one would be Thou shalt not kill?  If Jesus was right (if?), then it becomes Thou shalt not hate!  We do not defend hate, ever.  Especially given the blasphemous claim to be Christian, this hate.....

No adultery (in a culture where sex as impulse, pleasure and self-fulfillment is all over the media)?  Jesus said if you harbor lust in your heart, you are an adulterer.  No condemnation there; just as in that moment in John’s Gospel, Jesus encounters an adulterer in order to set her free.  No stealing?  What did John Wesley say about a lack of overabundant charity to the poor – that it’s theft?  No coveting?  Coveting is the engine of capitalism!  But God would liberate us from the stranglehold of always wanting more – or really, wanting what is new and different.  I don’t want more iPhones.  I want the latest iPhone – largely because I saw one in my neighbor’s hand.

The purpose of the commandments is stated right there in Exodus 20 – “to prove you.”  We avert our gaze from the fact that the Bible repeatedly suggests we are being tested, we are being proven; the so-called “temptation narrative” (Matthew 4) really is a testing, just as Abraham was tested/proven (Genesis 22).  Beyond the proving, the simple dream of the commandments is “that you may not sin.”  Not “to uphold civil society in America.”  God sincerely wants to help us not to sin.

Philippians 3:4b-14 is similarly an extraordinary text.  Paul does his boasting thing – while clarifying he’s not boasting! – but with the clincher: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss.”  We sing “My richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”  We sing this hymn – but do we get the depth of the sentiment expressed?

Paul’s counsel is Lose anything, everything, for “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  We Americans think we can have our cake and eat it too; we can keep all our stuff and also know Jesus.  But there is inevitably a sacrifice, a loss, an emptying before Jesus can be known – and once he’s known, there is an emptying.  And why?  In the prior chapter, Paul spoke of having Christ’s mind – which was one of kenotic self-emptying.

Paul’s abiding goal is “to be found in him.”  Paul was found by Jesus – interrupted on the road to Damascus.  The notion is We are lost, we are wanderers, we are on the run – like Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”: “I fled him, down the nights and down the days; I fled him down the arches of the years; I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, and in the mist of tears I hid from him……”  I love Stephen Fowl’s phrasing: “Christ is no longer a commodity to be gained but a place, a home where the lost Paul is found.”

We like “know him and the power of his resurrection” – but then Paul adds “and may share in his sufferings.”  To desire Christ’s sufferings?  We hope his suffering will shield us from suffering. 

But ponder St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer before the crucifix:  “My Lord Jesus Christ, two graces I ask of you before I die: one is that I might feel in my body, as far as possible, the pain you underwent in your hour of passion; and the second is that I might feel, as far as possible, the love with which you were inflamed so as to undergo such a passion for us sinners.”  Mind you, Francis’s prayer resulted in the stigmata, in constantly bleeding wounds in his hands, feet and side.  Do we fear Jesus might actually join with us in his sufferings?

Karl Barth (along with others) is vigilant to be sure we don’t make faith into a work:  “Paul has no intention of supplanting the Pharisaism of works by the far worse Pharisaism of the heart… There is no bridge from here to there, but solely the way from there to here – the way that from beginning to end and all along is God’s way.” 

Paul in a picturesque ways conceives of this union with Jesus as a runner pressing hard toward the prize.  Fowl’s rendering is helpful: “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.”  Let the preacher take his or her own risk at athletic metaphors.  I heard a preacher once tell about running in the state finals of the 100 yard dash, starting poorly, but rallying and winning.  I wasn’t inspired…

The Gospel, Matthew 21:33-46, is another that feels harsh and simplistic.  Probably Jesus had his in your face, utterly simplistic preaching moments – as we all do.  The most promising moment in his tirade is his quotation from Psalm 118 about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone…

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   ** My two newest books, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, and Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us About Powerful Leadership, are available.

What can we say come October 1? World Communion Sunday

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October 1.  World Communion Sunday.  Tempting to speak thematically – although for me, the discipline of accountability to a text presses me toward better preaching than vaguely meandering on a theme, even a beloved one like the idea of communion everywhere.  Inevitably, the text for the day will serve well enough.  I’m choosing Philippians 2:1-13, which will compel me to highlight not the world so much as the world’s Lord. 

The Gospel, Matthew 21:23-32, has surely been preached upon well by a holy host of clergy.  But for me, it feels like, with the end drawing near, Jesus in a bit of a cantankerous mood.  This is not his best “a man had 2 sons” story.  Jesus clearly isn’t interested in the kinds of churches we spend our lives in, which so blandly are defined by the old “a nice place where nice people do nice things with other nice people.”  It’s the kooks, the suspect, the sketchy, the people that church people would deem irreligious:  this is the band of followers Jesus would gather.  If I were pressed to preach on this, I’d lean back toward that Tony Campolo story about the late night diner birthday party for Agnes the hooker.  Or St. Francis (whose feast day will be Wednesday October 4) – who touched lepers and befriended Muslims.

Exodus 17:1-7 is rich with possibilities.  Back on September 10 I preached on Exodus 12, the Passover text – and we used the occasion to teach our congregation about Judaism’s practices.  Same here: by luck of the lectionary draw, this Wednesday is the beginning of Sukkoth – the Feast of Booths, commemorating the wilderness wanderings.  Jewish families create little shelter-like structures in their homes.  Fascinating.  Talk to a rabbi.  See if you can get invited over for a glass of wine.  In the sermon, tell about your visit.

This business of demanding proof should draw many people in.  Anselm, Aquinas and a host of brilliant people have devised proofs for God’s existence.  Logic can’t bend the will, or the heart though.  As we’ll see in Philippians 2, Jesus ‘proved’ God by utterly ungodlike actions:  humbling, debased, being abused and killed.  There.  That’s the only proof you get. 

Like the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the people are thirsty – and then they also are thirsty.  This story figured prominently in the rest of the Bible.  Psalm 81 and 95 remember and issue dire warnings based on it.  “O that you would listen to me, Israel!  Do not be stubborn as you were at Meribah.”  As C.H. Spurgeon put it, “Let the example of that unhappy generation serve as a beacon to you; do not repeat the offenses which have already more than enough provoked the Lord.”

I also suspect that this story lay in the background of that mystifying moment in John 7:37-39.  The festival’s climax was reached when the people gathered around the waters from the spring Gihon flowing into the Pool of Siloam at the foot of Mt. Zion.  The priest would dip a golden pitcher into the water and carry it at the head of a procession of singers and wavers of palm branches up hill to the Temple precincts.  After marching around the Temple seven times, the priest would pour the water out on the ground.  Jesus, in that year narrated by John, stood to the side and said to those who could hear, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”

Philippians 2:1-13 is one of the high water marks in all of Scripture, almost a creed-like distillation of the entire story of redemption.  Karl Barth: “A text like this can hardly be approached with sufficient care and concentration, for it offers so much is so few verses – a little compendium of Pauline testimony.”

Little things charm me here (and so does the big thing…).  “If there is any encouragement…”  A big if indeed!  Clearly the if implies what there should be, what the church should be about, what we all crave:  encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, compassion, sympathy.  From these, the possibility of “being of one mind,” so elusive for us, even in church life, inevitably follows.  Where in our culture will you be told “Regard others as better than yourselves” – which is curious, since we seem quite naturally to do two weird things constantly:  we harbor dark feelings of insecurity, suspecting others have it better, scanning Facebook with envy, etc.; but then we pass snarky judgment on others as if we’re superior – no more than a kneejerk reaction to our sense of inferiority.  Paul wants neither, but the clarity that is humility.  Humility is simple honesty.

“Look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”  No politician since John F. Kennedy (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”) has ever uttered such words, and neither have advertisers.  And then the last 2 verses!  Can you hear the paradox: “Work out your salvation, knowing God is at work in you.”  Do I work?  Does God work?  Do I work and then realize God’s the one doing it?  “End of faith as its beginning”?

But then the glorious climax: to be one with Jesus, we ponder his story in the words of what scholars of course think was an early Christian hymn.  What a terrific hymn!  I close my eyes and try to picture a couple of dozen Christians gathered in somebody home in Antioch, or after hours in the marketplace in Philippi.  What was the tune?  What did their voices sound like together?  {I like in preaching to raise such questions – just to tease the imagination; no need to take it further.}

Translators differ on how to render the very beginning of the thing, but I feel sure I know the right way!  Should it be the familiar “Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”? or the equally valid “Because he was in the form of God, he emptied himself”?  God didn’t temporarily suspend being God, masquerading as empty, humble, obedient and slave-like for a season.  God, in Christ, showed us God’s heart, what it always has been and will be like.  His wasn’t to grasp (can we picture Adam and Eve grabbing that fruit? or Prometheus seizing the fire of the divinities?), or to consume, but to be emptied, poured out, “born.”  God thought I want them to know and love me – so I’ll do this:  I’ll become an infant, totally vulnerable, dependent, the antithesis of power.  Maybe then they will be tender toward me and each other.

As von Balthasar wrote, “In the Incarnation, the triune God has not simply helped the world, but has disclosed himself in what is most deeply his own.”  Infancy, and crucifixion:  this is God.  Paul moves into glorification – but as Barth reminds us, when the crucified one is glorified, “the abasement is not washed out or cancelled – it is he [the crucified one] who is exalted; it is to him the great name is given; it is of him who abased himself that all that follows is said.”

This downward mobility, this life as emptying, will be ours the closer we are to Jesus. 

I will speak of St. Francis, not only because he is the patron saint of peace in our broken world, but because his to-do list every day was to be one with Jesus in this humble self-emptying.  He shed his wealth, he consorted with the lowly; he even prayed to share in Jesus’ wounds – and his prayer was answered with the mysterious wounds he experienced in his hands, feet and side.

The eloquence of the hymn writer in Philippians 2 (or of Paul, or both) is mind-boggling, and inspiring – and calms you down considerably.  “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.”  This is what will happen, is already happening in a partial, anticipatory way when we gather for worship, when we imagine joining hands with fellow believers all over the world on this communion Sunday.   I’ll be preaching and standing behind the Lord’s table on Eastern Standard Time –

 and I will remind my beloved people what I learned from a sermon by Albert Outler (in his sermon, “The Table of Our Lord,” preached at Highland Park UMC in 1969:  “This particular Sunday began twenty hours ago at the International Dateline in the western Pacific – and the earliest celebrations were in palm-thatched chapels in Fiji, Samoa, and Micronesia.  Then, as the day fled westward round the globe, other Christians in other countries gathered in their churches to invoke the living presence of Christ in his sacrament and to receive his healing power in their hearts and lives – in Japan, the Philippines, Asia and Australia; in Turkey and Greece and Russia; in Africa, Europe and the Americas – Christians of every race and color, of all languages, dress and custom, in every conceivable circumstance of life and fortune.  Christians, we now know, are a minority in the world, but on such a day as this we loom larger than usual because of our self-conscious community, generated and sustained by this universal sacrament of God’s love in Christ.”

This lovely riff reminds me of something Mark Noll wrote about the nature of worldwide Christianity – and fits flawless into the way Jesus “was born in human likeness and found in human form.”  This is cool:  “Christianity appears more and more as an essentially pluralistic and cross-cultural faith. It appeared first in Asia, then Africa and Europe. Immediately those who turned to Christ in these ‘new’ regions were at home in the faith. When they became believers, Christianity itself became Asian, European and African. Once Christianity is rooted in someplace new, the faith itself also takes on something from that new place. It also challenges, reforms and humanizes the cultural values of that place. The Gospel comes to each person and to all peoples exactly where they are. You do not have to stop being American, Japanese, German, or Terra del Fuegian in order to become a Christian. Instead, they all find rich resources in Christianity that are perfectly fitted for their own cultural situations. It is by its nature a religion of nearly infinite flexibility because it has been revealed in a person of absolutely infinite love.”

There are deep political implications.  When the early Christians said “Christ is Lord,” that was politically subversive, for it implied “Caesar is not.”  And let me suggest that this business about Jesus emptying himself has implications for how we as clergy lead, in preaching and everywhere else.  Here is an excerpt on this text from my new book, Weak Enough to Lead.

   Hudson Taylor, a pioneer English missionary to China, was onto something: ‘God chose me because I was weak enough. God does not do his great works by large committees. He trains somebody to be quiet enough, and little enough, and then he uses him.’

     The liberation in learning you are weak enough to lead is twofold. First, it is always theologically truer to say I am weak and broken than I am strong and capable. This isn’t self-recrimination, wallowing in self-pity, and clinging to negative messages absorbed in childhood. It is the joyful clarity that humility brings, and the holy bonds we discover with others. We need not wait for the physical collapse of someone before noble things happen. We are all broken already. Let the outpouring of mercy begin.

     And second, when we lead out of our weakness, we are very close to Jesus, who was handed over, silent before his accusers, meek before his attackers, and inert as he was laid in the tomb. Jesus led with nothing but love. When Jesus led in weakness, he was not pretending, as if playing out some divine charade. What we see in Jesus is who God truly is. I’m fond of what may be the better translation of Philippians 2:6: instead of ‘Although he was in the form of God he emptied himself,’ we should read ‘Because he was in the form of God he emptied himself.’ Indeed. It was precisely because he fully was God and transparently unveiled the heart of God that Jesus came as a humble nobody and consorted with nobodies, and laid down his life, bearing shame and abandoning all privilege. Michael Gorman called the cross ‘the signature of the Eternal One.’ The Christian leader, while properly interested in things running smoothly, staff relationships, and bottom lines, is above all else obsessed with Jesus, wanting not just to please or follow him, but even to be like him, to be one with him.

     So leaders embrace their inevitable weakness, their created limitations, and are unafraid to share and live out of that weakness…



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   ** My other recent book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, is also available.

What can we say come September 24? 16th after Pentecost

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   Typically I pick one text from the lectionary options, and then occasionally I will allude to another text for the day.  But sometimes the pairing of two texts can stagger me with the way they illuminate one another.  Exodus 16:2-15 and Matthew 20:1-16 do just this.  They feel different: one is a legendary kind of moment in historical time, while the other is a made-up story that no one would conceive as a real happening – although we’ll ponder this later on.  Both are about food production, one miraculous (sort of) and one by the labor of hired hands. 

     And both are, at the end of the day, about what it means to have “enough.”  If I titled my sermons, this one might be called “Enough” – and I’m straying already in my mind to Flannery O’Connor.  Once, after blurting out to a friend, who spoke warmly of communion as symbolic, Flannery said “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it” – but then added more graciously and theologically, “It is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”  That is, the Eucharist is enough.

     Exodus 16 answers the question posed by Psalm 78:19: “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”  Maybe the harder question is Can this freed people stay free?  Photos of the Sinai can give you the feel of the region.  Not making a beeline for the Promised Land, but detouring far to the south through daunting terrain, the people had to wonder Are we being led? Or are we merely wandering?  If they sang “I am bound for the promised land,” it wouldn’t have been bouncy and enthusiastic the way we sing it, but more of a dirge.

     With what will become monotonous whining, the people murmured – and God answered their murmuring, not with a curse or thunderclaps from heaven, but with bread.  This is sheer, unadulterated grace: God replies with mercy, not to prayerful repentance, but to doubt-riddled whining.  God gave them Manna – a wonderful word whose Semitic origin means “What is it?”  Well, if heaven isn’t really up, this bread that came down – what was it? 

In Bible times, Josephus the historian described the Sinai’s honey like deposits of the tamarisk (packaged and sold as souvenirs today!); insects suck off shrub’s sap and deposit the surplus on the branches; the residue crystallizes and falls to the ground; but this manna, not very tasty but rich in carbohydrates and sugars, succumbs to ants not long into the heat of the day. 

     Questions abound: it’s not a miracle? Or it’s the miracle of the tamarisk and insects?  They saw this provision as a divine gift.  And clearly the story begs us not to get derailed with the murmuring of historical questions.  Flannery O’Connor resisted the idea of Eucharist-as-symbol, but there is much symbolic in this story.  The double portion on Friday to cover the Sabbath… although the Sabbath commandment hasn’t been given just yet!  No wonder devotional guides play on this ‘daily bread’ image; did Jesus have the manna in mind?  You have to look out for it every morning; you can’t save up for a few days… etc.  You have to love the way God not only responds to the murmuring with mercy; then when God gives them the bread, there are conditions.  I admire B. Davie Napier’s phrasing (in Come Sweet Death, pondering the tree in Genesis 3, but it fits the manna as well): 

   Behold, God’s wondrous gift is given

    – with strings.
   All glory be to thee, uncertain giver,
   Who wants to have his gift
   and give it too.

     There are plenty of theological ruminations to be made on this scene.  Brevard Childs (in his commentary which is unfailingly brilliant) points out that Exodus 16 does precede Exodus 20:  “The sign of divine grace preceded the giving of the law of Sinai.”  And then the riveting, profound scene narrated in John 6, when Jesus not only feeds thousands but explains his mission.  I heard Fred Craddock, in an elegant sermon, summarize the plot of the entire chapter:  Jesus gave the hungry bread, and they certainly were delirious with delight; they expected the Messiah to do such things.  But then Jesus basically said You can’t live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  Some who’d been excited begin to drift away.  Then Jesus ratcheted up the stakes further by explaining that “the bread I give for the life of the world is my body.”  He’d gone from feeding them, to pushing them toward Scripture, and now he’s dreaming of crucifixion.  Plenty flee at this point – until not very many at all are left.  Jesus asked, “Will you also go away?” – and Peter rather pitifully and yet with immense commitment responded, “Lord, to whom would we go?” 

Craddock’s sermon’s title was how he ended his sermon:  “I’ll stay.”  After observing how many leave the church or even the ministry, he offered his humble, simple affirmation in solidarity with Peter:  “I’ll stay.”  Great preaching.

     Jesus gave them enough – not just enough bread, or just enough Scripture, but his own crucified body, which really is enough, just as the manna and the commandments to come, and the promise really were enough.  Which lead us to Matthew 20:1-16, today’s Gospel lection. 

This text about laborers in a vineyard is a splendid example of Jesus’ teaching, which is the antithesis of conventional wisdom, the kind of thing Clarence Jordan called a Trojan Horse: you let it in and Bam!  Preachers typically preach to people who’d say I’m a 12 hour or a 9 hour kind of guy… but maybe they really are just one hour people, or maybe they aren’t in the field at all.  It’s about the miracle of grace – and not last minute conversions.  Grace is for everybody, and it’s enough for everybody.  And there might even be a bigger surprise in the story – as I discovered when researching my new book coming out this month, Weak Enough to Lead. 

I’ll share this excerpt, which passes along a framework for how to read Matthew 20 that I find to be entirely persuasive, and alluring.  Here goes:

     Jesus made up a shocking story about a vineyard owner who hired laborers in the morning, then some more later in the day, still more in the afternoon, and finally a few with only an hour left. When they lined up for their pay, he gave every last one of them a denarius. Quite fair – for a full day’s work. Not surprisingly, the guys who put in more time were furious. We are tempted to put some clever spin on the story, as if it is about late in life conversion, or even the magnificent bounty of God’s saving grace.

     But Amy-Jill Levine, rightly pointing out that “Jesus was more interested in how we love our neighbor than how we get into heaven,” asks an intriguing question: “Might we rather see the parable as about real workers in a real marketplace and real landowners who hire those workers?” Our gut reaction is No way! But wasn’t Jesus the kind of guy who wanted everyone to have enough? If the guys who were hired late, through no fault of their own, only got one-twelfth of a day’s wage, their family would starve. This is the same Jesus who told a rich man to sell everything, who directed party hosts to invite those who couldn’t invite them in return, who spoke of lenders forgiving massive financial debts, who included despised and untouchable people in his close circle, who visited Zaccheus and left him so staggered he gave his hard-earned money back with interest to those he’d earned it from.

     Shares of stock in a company run by Jesus would plummet in value. But he is our leader, the childlike one who never tired of asking hard questions. Could we his followers lead in very different ways, in weaker ways? Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms and creator of the Cotton Patch Version of the Bible, was a bold, no-holds-barred Christian, one of those once in a generation believers radical enough to dare to do what’s in the Bible. One Sunday he preached at a gilded, high steeple church in Atlanta. After the service, the pastor asked him for some advice. The church custodian had eight children, and earned a mere $80 per week. The concerned minister claimed he tried to get the man a raise, but with no success. Jordan considered this for a minute, and then said, “Why don’t you just swap salaries with the janitor? That wouldn’t require any extra money in the budget.”

     Jesus was like the child who can’t stop asking questions, like the child who sees a homeless person by the road and asks Mommy, can’t he live at our house? Maybe a leader can’t pull off the vineyard wage maneuver, or even the salary swap. But is there a way to lean in that direction, to engage in something dramatic to veer a bit more toward Jesus than business as usual? Jesus asks leaders, not merely to obey the law or even to be kind, but to be different.

     End of excerpt.  I want in my preaching to explore this concept of “enough.”  Often it’s a turning point, like “I’ve had enough.”  Sometimes it’s when we feel a keen lack: I’m not good enough, I don’t have enough money.  Douglas Meeks (in God the Economist) was right when he described our culture’s sense of scarcity: no matter how much you have, there is this lingering fear it might not be enough.  Enough for what?  Fill in the blank…

     Sometimes it is contentment – a holy, divinely-purposed goal:  it is enough.  Gratitude is believing It is enough instead of It’s not enough.  Grace, being God’s child, living as one in God’s image, etc., is enough.  Enough describes divine intent regarding resources: God wants everyone to have enough.  There’s the old Haitian proverb: “God gives, but God doesn’t share.”  The idea is that God has given us enough – enough food, enough water, enough of all the basics of life.  It’s up to us to share, instead of hoarding or blocking the sharing.

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   ** My newest book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, is available.  My forthcoming book, Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us About Powerful Leadership, will appear before too long.